This invention pertains to object oriented technology, and particularly to a novel object-oriented system which allows direct access to attributes and direct invocation of methods defined in compiled classes in an interpretive mode.
Object-oriented technology is beginning to enjoy widespread popularity in recent years. When using object-oriented technology to build applications, a user must first build the underlying classes. These classes are then used to develop applications in a similar way that integrated circuits are used to build electronic devices. To build these classes and applications, object-oriented languages like Smalltalk and C++ are commonly used. These two languages are unlike each other in one very important aspect. Smalltalk is a fully interpretive language that allows rapid prototyping of classes and applications, but at the expense of performance. On the other hand, programs written in C++ must be compiled and linked before they can be executed. This allows for fast program execution but makes C++ unsuitable for rapid prototyping and debugging.
Given the relative complexity of many object-oriented packages, prototyping and debugging are not simple tasks, but rather involve a considerable amount of effort and a number of iterations in order to perfect the software product. Accordingly, the inability of object-oriented languages to operate in an interpretive fashion makes prototyping and debugging utilizing such non-interpretive software extremely difficult and time-consuming. Conversely, object-oriented technologies which operate in an interpretive manner, but which cannot be compiled, introduces severe performance penalties when utilizing such interpretive object-oriented technologies.